Find out more about Learning Communities by visiting the Los Angeles Educational Partnership's Learning Community Program's home page WORKS CITED: McLaughlin, Milbrey and Joan Talbert. Contexts That Matter For Teaching and Learning: Strategic Opportunities for Meeting the Nation's Educational Goals. Stanford University: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching, 1993. Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Learning Communities Strive for Common Goal By Greg Nicholson Learning Community Program Los Angeles Educational Partnership A LEARNING COMMUNITY (OR LEARNING ORGANIZATION) is a group of people that examine current and past practices and assumptions in an effort to learn and improve their own practice. Ultimately, the community is working toward achieving a common goal. Members of a learning community make a concerted effort to act on what they have learned. In this they differ from most organizations where individuals either do their job the same way it has always been done because that is the easiest way, do their job a certain way because someone in authority so directed them, or work at cross-purposes with one another despite desiring similar results. There are several common principles that Peter Senge, author of "The Fifth Discipline," has identified as necessary for a learning community. The first is a commitment to what he refers to as personal mastery. An individual committed to personal mastery is constantly learning. He or she is learning through inquiry, commitment to the truth, and a willingness to question the status quo (Senge, 172). A community committed to personal mastery seeks out and values such individuals and provides a supportive atmosphere for them. Such a commitment, by both individuals and the community, is essential to a learning community because it fosters contented, productive members. Finally, as Senge notes, such a commitment is important because "organizations learn only through individuals who learn" (Senge, 139). A second important component of a learning community, and one necessary for enabling an individual or organization to learn, is the examination of mental models. Mental models are, according to Senge, "deeply held internal images of how the world works" (174). An examination of mental models, and the past and current practices they inform, can often reveal contradictions or inaccuracies between what we believe and what is necessary to achieve our goal. For example, certain assumptions about how students learn may be (and have been in the past) incorrect and actually hinder many student's learning. Only through a commitment to examining and testing our mental models will we discover what needs to be changed to improve student learning. A learning community is not simply about learning, however. A learning community uses what it has learned in an attempt to improve its practice and achieve its goal. Thus, it is important for a learning community to have a shared vision of the goal it is working toward. As Senge writes, "a shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning" (206). However, learning is not the end goal but an important means for achieving the end goal. Individuals in a learning community are motivated to work to achieve the goal set out in their shared vision. The final necessary component for a learning community is effective teamwork. If the members of an organization are not learning and working together as a group the organization will not learn. Individuals not in a team, even if they share a vision, are likely to work at cross purposes and not achieve their goal. Teams or groups of people working closely together are the smallest unit where organizational learning can occur and effect necessary change. This is because dialogue and discussion can occur in small groups. Dialogue and discussion coordinate everyone's efforts so that they complement one another and are directed toward achieving the goal of the group or team (Senge, 234). An effective learning community, then, will have a shared vision, value individuals dedicated to learning, support the practices necessary for learning, and organize itself so learning will effect the entire community, putting into practice what was learned to achieve the group's vision. Although Peter Senge was writing with corporate organizations in mind, the principles of the learning community are equally important for education. In their study titled "Contexts that Matter for Teaching and Learning," Milbrey McLaughlin and Joan Talbert write; "learning communities help generate knowledge, craft new norms of practice, and sustain participants in their efforts to reflect, examine, experiment, and change" (18). They conclude that teachers who practice within this type of community are the only ones likely, over time, to improve their own practice and their students' learning (8). Learning communities, then, are essential in any organization where individuals seek to improve the ways in which they do their work and achieve a common goal.